Interconnections between Reliability, Maintenance and Availability Catalin Mihai, Sorin Abagiu, Larisa Zoitanu, and Elena Helerea Transilvania University of Brasov, 29, Eroilor Str., Brasov, Romania
[email protected] Abstract. The assurance of power quality depends on factors which influence the performances of the availability: the reliability and its support – the mainte- nance. This paper deals with the interactions between the indicators of reliabil- ity, maintenance, availability and with the methods for the calculation of the reliability indicators. For an overhead line of 110 kV the characteristics of the reliability of the system are determined by modeling and analyzing its function- ality by the Markov process of continuous time. The value of the availability index and the maintenance function function contributes to ascertain for the studied case that the value of the availability coefficient has the same value with the probability of success and the probability of repairing an equipment is closely connected to the maintenance function. Keywords: Reliability, maintenance, availability, Markov process, electric lines. 1 Introduction The equipment used on the power systems is relatively old and increases the financial effort for their maintenance. Therefore appear features of the electrical systems that are closely interrelated, such as: reliability, availability and maintenance, their interactions determining the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the analyzed system, its safe operation. The reliability, as a feature of the system in fulfilling the specific functions in a certain period of time, continues to be the subject of many researches [1],[5],[7] and [10]. There are many papers [2],[8],[12] and [13] that have as a research subject the maintenance, their goal being to determine the optimum technical – organisational actions to maintain or to repair the system functionality.